Emily Wickersham Promoted To 'NCIS' Series Regular As Ellie Bishop

Emily Wickersham will join the NCIS cast permanently. The actress was originally slated to appear in three episodes but has been promoted to a series regular.

Emily Wickersham is set to join the cast of NCIS full time, CBS announced yesterday (4th November).

Emily Wickersham has been promoted to a series regular on NCIS.

The actress, who has appeared in such films as I am Number Four and Remember Me, originally filmed three episodes for NCIS. However her character, NSA analyst Eleanor "Ellie" Bishop, has been promoted to a series regular. The show's team were already excited to be working with the actress, as Michael Weatherly (who plays Antony DiNozzo) told Entertainment Weekly: "We're excited about is having Emily join us on these little adventures we do every week and seeing how she is in the world that we create together. I hope the audience likes her as much as we did right away."

The show's team and producers were highly complementary of Wickersham. Executive producer Gary Glasberg said in a statement: "Emily Wickersham's Ellie Bishop is proving to perfectly compliment the NCIS team. Her energy and enthusiasm is contagious. Great things are planned for Bishop and we couldn't be more thrilled to have her on-board."

The former The Sopranos actress was cast as Bishop in September after Cote de Pablo, who played Ziva, left the show. Wickersham's character in NCIS has been described as "a mysterious mixture of analytic brilliance, fierce determination and idealism."

The first of the three episodes Wickersham was intended to originally appear in will begin airing on November 19th. According to Entertainment Weekly, Wickersham's character will be introduced when the NCIS team discover the Secretary of the Navy was bugged during a closed meeting. Bishop had previously warned of such a security breach and is brought on board to help discover who was behind the crime.

NCIS follows a team of security experts as they solve crimes within the US naval forces in their jurisdiction. The show, originally set in Washington, spawned a spin-off series set in Los Angeles. A third series, NCIS: New Orleans, may air next Spring, if CBS give it the go ahead. Mark Harmon and Michael Weatherley star in NCIS; whilst Chris O'Donnell and LL Cool J aka Sam Hanna stars in NCIS: Los Angeles.